There IS an *IT*! Should We Call It *Evil*?
Some have questioned my using here the word “evil.” Let’s play around a bit with that question.
At the end, I will invite people to post their entries to the NSB “Name It” contest: those who want a different name than “evil” can propose their favored word or phrase.
In the meanwhile, let me lay out two major components of my own thinking. First, that there is an important Something here to be named. And second, that there are good reasons (not necessarily decisive reasons) for calling this Something by that old and freighted word, Evil.
I. There IS an “IT”
In our times, something has arisen from the right with a power and a persistence of moral tendency unprecedented in American history. Virtually every day for the whole decade, disturbing story after story has arisen. We’ve had issues by the hundreds, with episodes virtually daily, countless stories of political power and political speech employed destructively. In all this variety of stories, the themes have been less numerous: Dishonesty. Greed. Divisiveness. Sadism. Insatiable lust for power. Refusal to sacrifice advantage for the greater good.
One looks in turn at this distillation of the innumerable into the few, and then even this few –this short list of general immoral tendencies– begins to converge into a common overall effect or consequence (or spirit).
I regard it as the central insight I’ve brought to this mission that what’s going on in America in our times is to be understood not as Many Things but as One; that this One Thing is a vast force with many tributaries but a consistent effect; that this One Thing has a history, having operated through our cultural system over the generations, but has never been so powerful as in this decade; that it is in the nature of this One Thing that it operates in ways that, from the moral and spiritual perspectives of our traditions (and of human traditions generally), is destructive of what has been considered valuable in human affairs and human systems; that the mode of operation of this One Thing involves making use of what is broken in individual people and in social systems to achieve this destruction.
These seem to me to be truths that are both DIFFICULT and VITAL to see.
A major part of the DIFFICULTY comes from the complexity of the process of integration-of-understanding required to see that –behind the recent lawless Bushite presidency and the present wholly unconstructive Republican opposition– there is a unifying pattern. And seeing this “IT” is all the more challenging in that involves perceiving not only the America of today, but also the existence in the deep past of self-perpetuating patterns that have coalesced in our times into the present destructive alliance on the political/cultural right.
To see all this is VITAL because defeating this destructive One Thing can most readily be accomplished by those who can recognize what the true nature of the battle is. As in the game “Battleship,” once one knows the shape and general location of the enemy’s hidden forces, one can make almost every strike hit its target. And once one understands the existence and nature of the underlying Force at work, one is less likely to be distracted or surprised by all the manifold ways in which it expresses itself. Whether in power or out, whether on health care or “the war on terror,” one knows that the unified source of its all will be manifested in the unifying nature of its impact: destruction, deception, division, damage—all the ways of underlying the Wholeness of the human realm.
It has seemed to me possible that some of those who object to my use of the word “evil” do not see this One Thing, and/or do not recognize how vital it is to being able to defeat this One Thing that we recognize the essentially unitary nature –and moral and spiritual valence– of this One Thing.
To those whose objections to my use of the word “evil” are based on their not agreeing with these perceptions, I would say that the disagreement is not about the word. If you don’t see the “It,” it does not make much sense for us to focus the discussion on what we should call “It.”
But with those who DO recognize the existence and centrality of this “It,” I’m glad to move ahead to the issue of a name.
II. Should We Call It “Evil”?
If you see that One Big and Important Thing working in our times, and object to Its being called Evil, please go ahead and propose the name you think It should be given.
In my major piece on the subject –see “The Concept of Evil– Why It is Intellectually Valid and Politically and Spiritually Important” at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?page_id=26 — I speak of this Thing in terms of a “force” or a “pattern.” And I characterize it as having the consistent property of working to destroy the structures of Wholeness. And so, recently, I’ve suggested that this One Thing could be named something like “That Force/Pattern that Destroys Wholeness.”
So the question might be asked: what reason is there NOT to substitute such a phrase for the single word, “Evil”?
On the basis of sheer accuracy –whether the words capture the meaning intended– I would have no objection.
But words are not just about accuracy. Equally important –at least when the words are being used, as these are, in a struggle over the destiny of our civilization– is IMPACT. Which means, we are talking here not just about the words, and about the Thing being named, but also about the audience.
I have two audiences, as I see it. One is on the right, and it consists of people who –for whatever unfortunate set of reasons– have aligned themselves with this One Thing that is so destructive of Wholeness. The other is on the left, and it consists of people who do oppose that One Thing but have not, as a general collectivity, been impressively effective in combating that destructive force or pattern.
With each audience, a different set of concerns arise regarding the desired Impact of the words. But in each case, there are reasons why the word “Evil” might be preferable to something like “”That Force/Pattern that Destroys Wholeness.”
With the people on the right, like those who constitute my radio show audience, I can just imagine how MOVED they’d be by some phrase like “That Force/Pattern that Destroys Wholeness.” (I’m being ironic, of course.) It would be –even more than is true in general with words that do not reinforce the dogmas of the group– like ducks off the water’s back. If it is my job to challenge them –and I believe it is– so that “those who will not see” might be jostled into opening their eyes to that vital reality to which they are now blind, there’s far more impact to be achieved by using a word that already has deep power and seismic resonance in their worldview. “Evil” is such a word.
I recognize that in our culture the word “evil” –precisely because it does already have established a powerful place in our cultural consciousness– has its downsides. What I mean by Evil may be akin to what that audience understands by the word, but it also has its differences. The general understanding of Evil in our civilization tends to reflect the somewhat primitive level of our moral consciousness generally, which is limited by (among other things) a low level of self-awareness combined with a tendency toward projection. When I say the word “evil” to that audience, I can be sure that in many minds the set of meanings and connotations that it evokes will differ in important (and, from my point of view, regrettable) ways from what I understand by it and am trying to convey.
However, which is more important in this situation: that I avoid any such misunderstandings but have very limited impact to challenge their alignment with this One Big and Destructive Thing? or that I pay some cost in terms of such distortion of my meaning, but with a greater impact on challenging them about the moral nature of the Force to which they’ve given their support?
The choice there seems fairly clear to me. And while I do not use the word evil –I mostly try to Show instead of Tell, as one says in the writing business– I do think that when I do choose to name it, this is the name of choice.
Anyone disagree?
Then there’s the audience of the left, which includes most of those who are reading me here on NSB (and I believe ALL who have complained about my using the word “evil”).
A good deal of the argument in that previously mentioned essay of mine, “The Concept of Evil,” was organized around the idea that many components of liberal America fail to recognize the reality of the moral dimension, fail to acknowledge the centrality of the struggle between good and evil in the human system, and recoil from the idea of “evil” because of those failures. I made that rhetorical choice, of course, quite deliberately. And I made it because I believed that the liberal resistance to that word signified an important source of the liberal weakness in its confrontation with that Force.
Now, again, I concede that accuracy does not impede by substituting other language for “good and evil”: the struggle might be described as one between “those patterns that create and sustain life-serving Wholeness and those that undermine and destroy such Wholeness.”
But I fear that such a substitution, though it might avoid objections, MAY also avoid some challenges that are perhaps better confronted.
Those who have objected to my use of the word “Evil” have used language that I believe MAY indicate that they are operating from a worldview in which the centrality of those patterns –and of their very different moral and spiritual valences, and their highly contrasting springs of origin– is denied. I am not certain of that.
But, as I look beyond those objections toward the general performance of American liberalism in the face of this One Destructive Thing that has arisen in our times to threaten all that is good in our country, I believe that there are strong reasons to believe that the failure to recognize –for what it is– this One Destructive Thing I call Evil has been a major factor in WEAKENING the forces brought forward to defeat it.
That includes the performance of the Democratic Party in this decade, and it includes the performance of President Obama during this first year in office.
If they’d fully grasped the nature and scope of what they were up against, and fully grasped the comprehensive stakes with which such a Big Thing infuses the battle It fights, I believe, these representatives of liberal America would have been far stronger in the battle. They would have been more deeply energized. They would have been less cowardly. And they would have employed more powerful and effective strategies.
If that is true, then it may be just as important for a liberal audience, as for a right-wing audience, that the words used to talk about this battle –this moral and spiritual struggle– be impactful. And that means that, objections notwithstanding, perhaps it is just as useful here as anywhere else for me to employ that ancient and freighted –but also, for that very reason, powerful– word, Evil.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:41 pm
I think WRONG is the simplest expression for most in its effect. ( I would like to elaborate briefly on that in a minute)
EVIL is a spirit.(as distinguished even from WICKED)
Evil is Satanic in origin and came out in the open in the Bush administration both in and out of government..I heard it and felt it at times when GWB even spoke. I think maybe he actually imagined in serving the extreme globalist ( to avoid the anti-semitic epithet being hurled again) he was serving God (again in his mis-conception of such Christianity as he has espoused). Actually he was engaged in the exact opposite. And so we have had a pretty serious introduction to life in a Satanic World as it may be when and if good should fail for a while ( as is prophesied).
Now back to WRONG that we see and are experiencing in the hellacious vileness of the pseudo conservative motor mouths . . this is competitive partisanship (paid for) gone extreme. To traditionalists who rely on the nations politics to support their values, the opposite party of neo-liberals
(self named Progressives) appear morally insane and are not subject to reason as understood by Traditional Conservatives. So since reason is not effective those publicly simply stiffing them have a considerable audience.
So we have a kind of dog fight. Is a dog fight ‘evil’ no . This is simply human nature in the raw . .. It is simply UGLY.
Now the economic ‘wrongs’ we are seeing and experiencing may spring from evil
but for most participants big and not so big
and the sell out of government to contri-bribes etc
Is maybe greed, self, personal ambition oblivious to and or uncaring of effect on others
and for some it is possibly a loss of belief in American ideals believing the society is hopelessly astray so the goal is to ‘get mine’ any way you can as soon as you can . . and get up and out’) This too is not EVIL It is human nature operating in a perceived
competitive and corrupt moral, political and social environment.
The Living Lie in numerous forms brought ‘us’ to this situation and that, of course, was true EVIL and is ever present.
If you listen closely you may can hear laughter, maybe not; my guess . . .
it’s coming from ‘hell’. . .
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Stick with “Evil”, Andy. It’s a serviceable word with a long history. I suspect those who can’t or won’t recognize it are either fortunate enough to have not yet come face-to-face with the dark side, or are somehow in it’s service. We don’t need any more ambiguity at this stage of the game.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Hi Andy, I appreciate your willingness to revisit the use of the word “evil” in describing the behavior of “the Bushites” and other reactionaries. I have long been uncomfortable with it because it so easily becomes a noun rather than an adjective, then it gets capitalized, then it takes on a persona and then it becomes a myth – getting in the way of rationality.
1. We have expended years of ink (keystrokes!) here trying to understand the roots of this “evil” phenomenon. One of my favorite thinkers, Lancelot Law Whyte begins his “The Next Development in Mankind” (recently re-issued after 60+ years!) with the provocative statement “Thought is born of failure.” When I recently began re-reading it after many years, I immediately thought: That is why Andy and the “None So Blind” crew are thinking so hard about the “evil” of the Bushites: a failure to understand it. It is a big mystery – easily “explained” by labeling it, but not understood at its roots.
2. Let us consider the beginning of an “explanation” that looks at individual and cultural development in terms of “stages of development,” each with its own dominant value meme. Look at the behavior of the Republicans: banding together as a tribe, showing intense loyalty, with survival and safety as their primary concerns. They have reverted there from our more usual politics of rationally searching for solutions for the common good, in which fairness is the key value. But when the neo-cons chose Reagan and threw out fairness as a value they were also backing down the values ladder, relying more on obedience, dominance and finally loyalty. The tribal stage is one we have each come through as children and which western culture came through long ago – but the capacity is still within us and we can be induced back to it. [This, by the way, is why our attempted imposition of “democracy” (fairness) upon the tribal peoples of Afghanistan will not work: they are three stages away from it. Even Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) notices this – letter in today’s Washington Post (1/31/10).]
3. My model here is “spiral dynamics,” developed by Chris Cowan, Claire Graves and Don Beck and used extensively by Beck in consulting with – among many others – South Africa to end apartheid there (18 trips there over many years) convincing deKlerc of the wisdom of freeing Mandela. (A review and summary of Beck’s book, by Steve Dinan of Esalen: http://www.spiraldynamics.com/book/SDreview_Dinan.htm)
4. Incidentally, it follows that one way Obama can begin to break up the Republican “tribe” is to challenge them individually to assert their individual separate power (anathema in a tribe) to join with the majority to achieve “power and glory” by sharing in the responsibility for accomplishing big things, thus talking them one step back up the ladder.
5. So now we can move the question to: how did Karl Rove manipulate them (through W) to revert to this earlier stage, setting aside whatever rational enlightenment they might have had? Or were they already there (via Reagan)? Or if 20% of the US population is just fixated at that level (the “base”) then how did they get elected? Now that would be an interesting discussion.
6. A question: since we are speaking of tribes, and your first major work is “The Parable of the Tribes,” what light can a review of that perspective shed on the discussion?
7. Having written #1-6 last week – awaiting your opening here – let me now add: If we took a sociological approach to trying to understand this social phenomenon (the Right Wing behavior that stumps us so), we would ask questions from the 3 major “schools” of sociology. 1. What cultural value shifts/strains would be encouraging this? 2. What psychological rewards are drawing these people to behave so? 3. What tangible payoffs are they getting? These 3 motivations are generally evident in the origin of every social phenomenon. I think our search here would be more effective if we used this paradigm as a model to go back to the “tributaries” and explain them. We have been bewailing the size of the mouth of the river without going into the jungle to find its sources. There have been dozens of books written on this (no, not off the top of my head)…
8. But perhaps I make a wrong assumption about your purpose here, Andy. You do seek to understand the source(s) of this phenomenon, do you not? How much progress would you say we have made in the last 5636 columns? Are we a little closer? A lot? Do you expect to come to an important insight about it, and perhaps publish something to rally the People to overcome it and resist a possible relapse? Where do you see this going?
Enough for tonight.
February 4th, 2010 at 8:07 am
Let me touch, as succinctly as I can do it while making some of my meaning clear enough to be intelligible, upon several points raised by Todd’s thoughtful message.
Todd, you write as if you think that I’ve been dealing at the mouth of the river and not its source. That is quite the opposite from what I believe I’ve been doing. I’ve written about the deep undercurrents of darkness woven through American history and how they coalesced into the present destructive force: that’s hardly the mouth of the river.
You ask: “Do you expect to come to an important insight about it…?” I believed and still believe that the perspective I offered in “THe Concept of Evil” was indeed an important insight: it is, to my mind, the most fundamental insight into what’s been happening that I’ve encountered.
Your posing those issues/questions in that way make me wonder if you’ve understood what I’m proposing.
In particular, upon reading your comment, I do not find any evidence that you see any “It” to be identified. It’s not that you have gone for the roots and I have not, nor that you think I’ve chosen an unfortunate name for the root cause I have identified. Rather, you do not see any “It” at all, by whatever name, and thus don’t see my theory of the “root” as illuminating the reality you see; and so you’ve come up with an altogether way of perceiving structure in the reality, and have a wholly different notion of that root.
You yourself seem to find the “spiral dynamics” perspective more illuminating. On two occasions –one in the 1980s and on in the 1990s– Don Beck and I were presenters together at one conference or another. I wish I could recall in detail my reasons for thinking “spiral dynamics” to be rather limited in its ability to illuminate the dynamics of the human saga, but I believe that I may be still able to articulate the key issue.
I found Beck’s ideas somewhat interesting, but from my perspective they were quite limited in their capacity to explain the human story.
The whole idea of social evolution has been, as I believe you know, central to my life’s work. Of course I studied what others have written about it, in the process of formulating my own theory. One of the main defects of some of the old theories is a tendency to talk about the unfolding of the human saga over, say, the past 10,000 years in what might be called “organic” terms: i.e., human societies –and/or human civilization taken as a whole– are likened to things like organisms that have a life-cycle.
And you refer here to “stages of development.” That also is an organic term. One might talk about the stages of development of an organism from gamete to embryo to fetus to baby to etc. One might talk about stages of development in intellectual development of the human, as Piaget did. Or in the life-cycle of an entire human life, as Erik Erikson did.
All that is legitimate.
But it is a serious error to imagine that civilized societies are organisms in something like the same way. And the reason why it is an error is that, unlike an oak tree growing from acorns or a human with its life-cycle, human civilization constitutes something that has sprung up ungoverned by any order. They are not bearing any tried-and-true pattern that has been crafted by eons of an evolutionary process. For 10,000 years, humans have been marching forward into terra incognita, with no established pattern to govern them.
So there can be “stages of development” in some ways, even in some important ways (tribal, kingdom, state…; stone, bronze, iron…; agrarian, industrial…). But not in some vital ways that lead to a more or less unitary way of understanding what’s at work.
Instead, a kind of destructive process –a social evolutionary cancer, not in the service of life– becomes a crucial part of the dynamic from near the beginning.
THis is the crucial insight of that book of mine you bring up: THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES.
Unless I am mistaken, you and Don Beck are thinking in terms that prevent the perception of a destructive dynamic being a major problem in the unfolding of the evolution of civilization and of civilized societies.
You talk about moving back to earlier stages in values. OK. THere might be identifiable stages in the development of values, just as Kohlberg developed a useful (if also not perfect) set of stages for moral development.
But what about the element of brokenness? What about ways of thinking and feeling and valuing and acting that are not the product of some “stage” of values, but of actual damage– wounds to people as individuals, pathological power relationships embedded in social institutions, etc? (The work where I do the most to explore the human brokenness that is the inevitable by-product of the systemic brokenness identified in THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES is my 1988 book, OUT OF WEAKNESS: HEALING THE WOUNDS THAT DRIVE US TO WAR.)
If I am not mistaken, that element –the crucial element of brokenness, of damage and of the dynamics (systemic and psychological) growing out of the evolutionary unWholeness that inevitably plagued the rise of civilization out of the natural order– is missing from your analysis. And that element is, I believe, quite essential to understanding not only the general problem of why so much of history has been so tormented (which is what those two books of mine are about) but also specifically what we’ve been confronting in America in our times (which is what NSB is about).
February 4th, 2010 at 11:25 am
Dr. Schmookler,
From my perspective, your work is illuminating, compelling and I believe correct. It is especially valuable to me as a teacher, and frankly because I came to the conclusion that the modern GOP is evil some 30 years ago. It is also manifest that part of the of the problem here, with placating non-rsistence, with the election of weak leaders such as Tom Daschle and Harry Reid-nice men to be sure but not warriors which is what the need demands. And now, President Obama who promised much, has delivered some welcome policies in job safety, school assistance, environmental protection and assistance for veterans. He has even unleashed the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Gates to do what is right to cut costs and make sure that the weapons our troops need actually get to the right people, while cutting programs that were gifts to campaign contribtors to begin with/and/or obsolete or for the long passed cold war. At least Gates, a Republican has the courage to make waves and make decisions which are right, though for some will be anathema. That is courage.
President Obama has failed to care as much for the country as he has the ‘process.’ He made, and is continuing to make sincere overtures to a political group who wish him to fail for their political ends. Today’s GOP is primarily a form of FASCISM. It is an appeal to the worst in human life, greed, racism, un-restrained violence and a lust for and so-far a nearly successful coup of American government.Think about it: the Bush family’s appointments to the Supreme Court, now giving artificial entities with no conscience nor even soul (Citizens United v. FEC)have given money the same standing as free speech, and the flood gates are opened, even wider. If there is one fair generalization about money in our politics, it is that money is a huge source for corruption, and it has just been made possible to make it even worse.
Paul Krugman noted a month or two ago that Mr. Obama has tied the Democratic Party to the bailouts and continuing bonus frenzy which is sweetening the lives of many of the people who foisted the economic explosion of the last 2 years, and maddening the rest of us. Perhaps the Pesident’s choice of his top (not all) economic advisors should have warned us that his values included the money game of which he was a part as a senator. In any event, this man has weakened the party, and his inability to go on the offensive against the EVIL of the GOP tanslates in perception and reality as an unwillingness to confront the forces attempting to establish a plutocacy and the destruction of the Constitution, and the willingness to avoid holding to account, those who have committed heinous crimes under the guise of serving the People of the United States.
I confess I don’t know what is coming next: I cannot imagine what it was like for men like Senator Jack Reed and Senator Jim Webb to sit and listen to the Pesident to tell them not to run for the hills-one a former U.S. Army Ranger, one a former U.S. Marine.
The remaining years in the President’s term, should he consider continue his weak and obliging ways will be longer than the three years he is due.
Tonight in my college ethics class, I will tell my students about fascism and AMerica’s shift to the far-right-how the values of these people are misanthropic, misogynistic, plutocratic and socially destructive. My boss usually gets a call every year or so and some times the college president hears about my outrageous liberal lies. Being women of strength, character and fairness they talk to me, determine again what I am teaching, and why, and as my ancestor , Daniel Boone was wont to say,
“Be sure you are right-then go ahead.” I wonder if they would be interested in running for office…..
February 4th, 2010 at 11:41 am
If I understand you right, David R., you acknowledge that The Living Lie in the Bushite regime was “true EVIL,” but –as you have indicated a couple of times before– you don’t see any significant continuation of that evil.
I don’t understand how that continuation is not visible to you. Really, just about EVERY DAY, that Culture of the Lie (as I call it, which I imagine has something to do with what you call the Living Lie ) is manifest at the center stage of our politics.
I watch Olberman and Maddow fairly regularly, and truly, hardly a day goes by when the use of Fear-Mongering Lies is not shown for what it is by those two. Last night, the Republican leadership was on display with one more example: they claim that Obama’s legal treatment of the Christmas underpants bomber makes him soft on terrorism and represents a dangerous break on what they –the great warrior Republicans– did. But then, as Maddow thoroughly demonstrates, EVERYTHING THEY WERE SAYING WAS A LIE. The Bush administration did the same thing in 300 cases of attempted terrorism on American soil. The shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights five minutes after being taken into custody, and several other times in the course of the next two days, and was prosecuted in American courts. The counter-example brought up by one Republican Senator –the case of Jose Padilla– who was shipped out to the military tribunals at Guantanamo, ended up being another instance of prosecution in the AMerican court system; why? because the Supreme Court threw out the other approach as unconstitutional, and required it.
This is just an example from last night. In the past year, there have been HUNDREDS of examples. They just keep coming. Complete dishonesty. Appealing to people’s fears. Doing everything they can to gain power even at the cost of our being able to address –or even just talk sanely about– our challenges as a nation.
How is that any different from the “true Evil” you recognize in the Bushite regime? To my eye, the only difference is that one wielded the power of the presidency and the other does not but is willing to do anything to get that power back.
February 4th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
The issue that Todd is raising here, Richard Randall, and that others have raised previously is not whether the Republicans SPEIFICALLY are evil, but rather whether ANYTHING is ever to be understood in terms of the concept of evil.
In other words, this is less about how to perceive any specific things than about what categories of qualities should in general be utilized in how one perceives the whole shebang.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
As there is no such thing as “cold”–scientifically there is only degrees of warmth/heat, and there is no such thing as “darkness”, only degrees of light, there is no such thing as “evil”–only degrees of love.
The Bushites are “suppressives” who hold love for their own kind and withhold love from the masses.
Evil is not a thing–it is the absence of love.
Buddhists say that judging–saying a thing is ‘good’ or another thing is ‘evil’ is a trap. The context/viewpoint can see good where another viewpoint seeing the same circumstance sees evil.
Seeing the absence of love, we have opportunity provide what is missing…love.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
I am certainly familiar with this idea, and there once was a time when I thought there was something to it. But I am afraid it doesn’t really do justice to the human realities.
Rather than developing at any length the inadequacies I see in this account, let me just use this rather concrete and humanly tangible illustration.
“The absence of love.” OK. I think we know what that looks like, since we’ve known people who are “cold,” who seem uncaring or indifferent.
But does “absence of love” capture what is happening in a person who is driven by a sadistic lust to inflict pain? When we read about some of the nightmares of history, about children being murdered while their parents are forced to watch, do we find it sufficient to say that what’s being manifested is simply an “absence of love”?
February 4th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Sounds like a lot of obfuscation to me. The instantiaion of the evil being done is by the GOP: I suppose you can de-constuct or mythologize, or de-mythologize and prevaricate all you wish: if you say there is evil you ought to name it. It has a name and an actor. It can be discussed in meta-language all you like. You said the left is part of the problem. It is-it is the weakness of men to stand up to the evil, in part because they are morally compromised by being part of the same financial issues and desires and the same lust for money, and partly because they are not prepared to fight the right because they have fought for very little before. It has always been go along and get along. The reason that thee was a ‘for the people’revolution in the days of the new deal was because there were men an women who were genuinely interested in solving problems because there were many people suffering. Many of these men and women had suffered too, because they lived lives of service and grit. The reason the right is always attacking Nancy Pelosi is because she fights them. She is their ‘always target.’ Men like Dodd and Lieberman are not fighters (for any good issue) they are aiders and abettors-for themselves, the wealthy and even the right.
I haven’t read your book with the parable of the tribes, and notwithstanding the validity of the concept of brokeness with but a prima-facie understanding of the term, the Liberals who ran things from the 30′s thru the 60′s knew thre were times to fight because there were real consequences for not only winning, but for losing. My point above is that ledership makes a difference. You can analyze tell hell freeezes over: the way to make a difference is to thoroughly discredit by public opposition and the use of the truth, the right. The battle is against the public and not so ppublic actors, not some concept evil.
February 4th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
I am not sure where you’re coming from in writing this, Richard. I post probably ten postings a week here dealing with the “instantiations” of evil in our time. I call it, I discuss its many various manifestations– fear-mongering lies on health care, the Republicans selling out the national interest in a time of crisis to seek to make the president fail because his power is not theirs, the lies that are told (as mentioned above) about how what the Obama administration is doing with the Christmas underpants-bomber is so “soft” when it’s the same as how the Bushites dealt with the shoe-bomber, and on and on and on.
Meanwhile, several people have been challenging me not on this level of instantiation, but rather on the level of the larger concepts by which we understand such actions. I put off responding to those challenges lately –having discussed them some here years ago– until now. You don’t have to be interested in dealing with the challenge that they raise. You are free to entertain the belief that such “analysis” can make no difference, and that you are able to say that THE way to make a difference is something else.
But this thread –one of more than a dozen to be posted here on NSB in just a single week– is dedicated to the question of whether evil is a useful and appropriate concept.
I happen to believe that it DOES make a difference. And I also happen to believe –as I indicate in my opening statement on this thread– that part of the ineffectuality and weakness of liberals in confronting this Whatever is that their understanding of that level (and their CONTACT with that level) is inadequate.
You and I agree that the weakness of the liberals in confronting this destructive force is PART of the problem, part of what has enabled this destructive force to gain and wield so much power in our society. Unless you are pretty certain that the liberals’ relationship to “good and evil” is NOT part of the source of that weakness we both are concerned about, it would seem to me that you ought to hesitate before dismissing such discussion as irrelevant to “making a difference.”
This level we’re talking about –the level at which the “instantiations” are seen as manifestations of something bigger– is the SPIRITUAL level. ANd, as I’ve said over the years here, I believe that it is at the spiritual level that real and decisive battle is being waged.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
One thing to keep in mind: rarely are people wholly good or evil. Nor is there a RIGHT answer – there are choices. Choices lead to habits; to character. Evil is not a person, but an energy or force that “desires” brokenness. This is not the creative/destructive nature of the universe, because those natural forces are in balance. The evil force desires to knock things out of balance…
As an example, the earthquake in Haiti is not the result of evil. It is a natural occurrence of terrestrial events. Loss of life is not evil. It is tragic and sad yes. The evil happens in the human interpretation of events as somehow deserved. It is a conscious effort to serve oneself or one’s interests at the unjust expense of others.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
I agree, Therese, that it’s best to understand evil not in terms of “evil people” but “as an energy or force that ‘desires’ brokenness.”
As for something like an earthquake, if one believes, with Pat Robertson, that such things happen as a result of forces of a moral nature, then the issue of good and evil comes up. Robertson needs to find a reason why an all-Good God would shake the earth and cause so many people to suffer or perish, so he points to some “deal with the devil” which supposedly makes it “right” for God to punish them with such a catastrophe. But if one believes, as I do, that the shifting of tectonic plates happen for reasons totally outside the realm of morality –which, so far as I can see, is pretty much confined to the human realm– then the destruction that occurs is not a matter of good vs. evil.
The plates do not “desire” brokenness. Rather, they exist in a dimension of things which has not yet been brought within the sphere of life where Wholeness has been created over the eons.
Likewise, when an Ice Age caused havoc in the human realm some 14,000 years ago (or so), this was not an issue of good and evil battling it out. If humankind chooses to ignore the indications that we are producing climate change and are called upon –by prudence, by our responsibility to future generations and to life on earth– to restrain ourselves somewhat from indulging our desires in order to reduce our disruptive impact on the climate, THAT WOULD TOUCH UPON THE MORAL REALM, and we could identify in our failures to date the workings of some of those patterns rightly called part of the force of Evil.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
While I certainly agree thet the Republicans have moved into Fascism and their actions are “evil” – I find no use in saying that. It only labels it; like finding a new species and not knowing what it is until someone names it. The phrase “an energy or force that ‘desires’ brokenness” implies a ceretain teleology that I think is only a psychological projection. (Does a rock in a stream “desire” the water to move around it? Social phenomena are natural too.) The use of the very term “brokenness” implies an understanding that there is in fact a PROPER form of development – even if this epic of Mankind is only one of a kind.
(Sideline: if the future of mankind becomes a totalitarian dystopia, will that then be seen as the “proper” form of development of mankind? I think the only viable future for us will come after we resolve the causes of this brokenness. Whyte traces the roots of it, which he calls “the European dissociation.)
Andy, you have in fact looked at many specific cases to support your idea of “evil” but throw up your hands when it comes to motivation – except to identify them as part of the stream of Evil. Your interest in unravelling the Southern pathology is a move in the right direction – but incomplete. Is it even fair to all these people to cast them out as “evil” without looking to their Humanity and asking: Why do they act so? What befell them that they themselves were broken – thrown off their own proper development? What in our general culture induces some peole to travel that descent rather than a higher road?
February 4th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
A couple of things I’d like to respond to in your message, Todd.
First, I don’t know why you say I throw up my hands when it comes to motivation. Aside from writing a whole book on the subject (already referred to), I have posted here I’d expect one or two dozen pieces devoted to aspects of “Why do they act so?” And I would be the first to agree that my psychological explanations are “incomplete.” Where have you ever found a “complete” explanation of such things.
As for the issue of “desire” and the issue of “teleology,” I have written here before that this forces behaves “AS IF.” Some here believe in Satan, and/or other ways of talking about evil where the matter of purpose and motivation can be embodied in an agent. I do not. And I agree that there’s an undefinedness to what that “AS IF” may point to. When it comes to these vast forces, which seem to have a kind of “spiritual” quality,” I really do not feel I have a handle on it. Is there a God? Is there anything of a vast nature that has a purpose or a role to play in the cosmos, or even just in our terrestial affairs? Some claim to know. I do not.
Finally, for this round, you write:
Well, Todd, yes it does imply something about development that is NOT RELATIVISTIC. It implies that there is embedded in human nature a set of needs and positive life-serving potentialities such that it is indeed BETTER for a child to be love than to be abused. I am NOT claiming “A” proper form of development. But I am claiming that human nature brings with it a valid way of talking about better and worse forms of development.
Do you really disagree?
February 4th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
I feel that I should respond further to your comment, but am constrained by dinner-making duties. Also by the difficulty of the subject.
It’s got to do with the issue of how this darkness should be a) understood and b) dealt with. I gather that in both cases, you believe that the answer is: “Look at and deal with the psychological level. That’s where this is at.” Am I right?
And I gather you also don’t take seriously the idea of there being some “It,” something vast that acts in a systematic way…”as if.” You don’t think there’s a reality out there of that sort, right? And you don’t think that looking at things in those terms will get us anywhere.
I indicated in “THe Concept of Evil” that this is not easy stuff to wrap one’s mind around, and that’s true for me as well as evidently for other people.
Over the ages, when talking about the kinds of things that are difficult to wrap one’s mind around –the “kingdom of heaven,” for example, or “the Tao”– people have resorted to metaphors. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a loaf into which yeast is mixed. The Tao is like the flowing of water.
I’ll propose a metaphor here, too, and I must confess: I’m not certain how apt it is, but it feels kind of right.
Imagine that a hit man is hired to kill you and me. We capture the hit man. You think that what we should find out is why the hit man took the job. What were his motivations? I say, what we really have to look into is, who hired him?
February 4th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
I think we have many points of agreement here after all – have been using different language.
1. We agree that our explanations to date are incomplete.
2. We agree that IT is not an agent per se, but is a complex of observable phenomena that may be easily (conveniently?) construed as an agent.
3. We agree (I hope I did not imply otherwise) that there is a proper developmental path, and getting off that path may be called “brokenness.”
4. I mentioned above the 3-part explanations of sociology; ergo we seem to agree that inducements to this bad behavior may be of a type: cultural, behavioral (tangible payoffs), as well as psychological.
So, I like your punch line: Who hired him?! Let us stop quibbling and cut to the chase.
The cultural precedents are the most difficult to figure, but there were steps leading up to the Reagan revolution. (Historical cycles, anyone?) The tangible payoffs are the trappings of power, including ownership and control of the wealth of the nation. And the main psychological payoff is the simple satisfaction of being right! Now the hard part: who’s behind the curtain? Why is being right more important to them than being respected by their countrymen? It takes us again to the progression of values. Enough for now.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
Andy said: But does “absence of love” capture what is happening in a person who is driven by a sadistic lust to inflict pain? When we read about some of the nightmares of history, about children being murdered while their parents are forced to watch, do we find it sufficient to say that what’s being manifested is simply an “absence of love”?
Yes, Andy. I don’t see why not. In the third of their remarkable trilogy, “Commonwealth”, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri posit evil as corrupted forms of love, whether it be for self, brother, family, tribe or nation. On the political scale our concern is mostly with love of tribe and nation as they give rise to nationalism, fascism, corporatism, racism, totalitarianism, etc. However, I don’t know whether this concept is compatible with neurobiology, not least because ”evil” is a social construct, not a thing-in-itself.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:23 am
I believe Andy is right when he posits more reality to evil than St. Augustine’s idea that evil is a lack of goodness. Old argument, not up to the human realities. Think of the Birmingham church bombings, the Shoah,
the lives of slaves, the actions of PG&E in Hinkley, California.
I did not mean to disparage NSB’s work at all: I am simply tired of fighting evil, and having our elected officials sell us out. I am also very interested in analysis and theory: I am pursuing a Ph.D in interdisciplinary studies, looking at the concept of sustainability across Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology, with Food Security, Psychology, and Green Business thrown in for good measure. I also deliberately challenge students in a conservative part of the nation (Idaho Panhandle) which has served as a home for White Supremecist elements, KKK, Aryans, you name it.
The people I have faced and will again, the skin-heads and militarists, and racists are real: they have done evil and given the opportunity will do so again. Our newly elected President is helping to destroy his party while rats like Lieberman and Dodd and the GOP criticize at every level. Perhaps it just compfortable to be able to put a face with a name/concept. Perhaps though I am mistaken….no doubt to some I will become like those I fight…
though I think not. I understand that knowledge and understanding are necessary to fight well and to finally subdue the evil…perhaps all we do is push it back for some time. If the right succeeds in taking all three branches of government again, it will bring abpout conditions which will threaten America and the survival of the world. That is something to think about.
February 5th, 2010 at 11:52 am
To try to clarify on the “absence of love” idea…
I do not believe evil is the absence of anything..
Such as dark is the absence of light
or indifference is the absence of love.
I believe that evil takes a good thing, like love, and twists it, perverts it, mutates it into a similar quality that is recognizable, but not whole – breaks it, if you will.
This is my reasoning behind using the term brokenness to describe how evil works.
To use this example with the recent and current GOP strategies – they take a good quality such as loyalty and twist it so that there is virtually a litmus test for being part of their group. They take fiscal responsibility, a good thing, and twist it so much that they deny a way to make healthcare accessible to the people. The problem is, that they now must follow their consistent negativity in branding Obama as socialist and stand on their ideologies, that they can’t now work with Obama on anything lest they be branded as heretical. The evil they have chosen to follow now traps them.
To think that evil is merely absence of good is to give it a place in the acceptable range of qualities we hold as good. That is the fallacy that lets evil sneak in under the radar. We just see it as less good than our opinions or values. Caveat: our discernment of evil can become broken as well as we begin to judge others and step into hypocrisy and self-righteousness and pride.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
There is so much great thinking on this thread, that I’ll start anywhere (and respond to one of the “easier” posts).
Therese wrote:
“As an example, the earthquake in Haiti is not the result of evil. It is a natural occurrence of terrestrial events. Loss of life is not evil. It is tragic and sad yes.”
Therese,
I would say that, difficult as there is at least the possiblity that “evil” was involved. HAARP is up and running in Alaska, and has been for some years. A few snippets from an article entitled:
“The Military’s Pandora’s Box,” by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning, which can be read in its entirety at: haarp.net
“This article was prepared to provide a summary of rgw book, Angels Don’t Play this HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology (1995), which describes an entirely new class of weapons.”
“HAARP will zap the upper atmosphere with a focused and steerable electromagnetic beam. It is an advanced model of an “ionospheric heater.” (The ionosphere is the electrically-charged sphere surrounding Earth’s upper atmosphere. It ranges between 40 to 60 miles above the surface of the Earth.)”
“Put simply, the apparatus for HAARP is a reversal of a radio telescope; antenna send out signals instead of receiving. HAARP is the test run for a super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam and heating those areas.”
“One patent states:
…this invention provides the ability to put unprecedented amounts of power in the Earth’s atmosphere at strategic locations and to maintain the power injection level particularly if random pulsing is employed, in a manner far more precise and better controlled than heretofore accomplished by the prior art, particularly by detonation of nuclear devices of various yields at various altitudes… ”
“…Begich found eleven other APTI Patents. They told how to make “Nuclear-sized Explosions without Radiation,” Power-beaming systems…electromagnetic pulses previously produced by thermonuclear weapons…”
“The most telling material about this technology came from writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National Security Advisory to U.S. President Carter) and J.F. MacDonald (science advisor to U.S. President Johnson and a professor of Geophysics at UCLA), as they wrote about use of power-beaming transmitters for geophysical and environmental warfare.”
“Press releases and other information from the military on HAARP continually downplay what it could do.”
February 5th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
A companion piece can be found on CommonDreams – February 3, 2010 – The Guardian/UK
“Why Washington Cares About Countries Like Haiti and Honduras”
***
For anyone interested, this is the link for a well-done documentary on HAARP (scary stuff!):
http://www.hulu.com/watch/100445/paranormal-tv-holes-in-heaven-haarp-and-advances-in-tesla-technology?c=News-and-Information#s-p3-so-i0
February 6th, 2010 at 1:16 am
I do not have an issue with using the staple word, “evil.”
My concern has to do with the context in which the word is often held. We all live within worldviews, usually unknowingly, like fish who never notice the medium in which they are swimming. It is difficult to notice the lenses through which our perceptions and conception are processed.
As I see it, what is needed is a willingness to deeply inquire into the nature of the universe in which we live. Such questions belong to the realm of ontology. They also inevitably involve an (often uncomfortable) examination of assumptions we have cherished because they provided us with a sense of continuity and structure.
Furthermore, such an assessment, by definition, goes beyond erudition, philosophy and logical reasoning. It must also involve a certain “depth of experience.” In general this would refer to the practice of any number of contemplative/meditative disciplines, where the emphasis is on inner silence, and the kind of intuitive comprehension which spontaneously arises out of our own depths.
Such an inquiry would shed light on, among many other things, the way in which we perceive the world in terms of “opposites” and the relationship of each member of a duality to its polar bedmate.
Einstein, I believe, suggests one element of this dilemma and the endemic state of delusion in which almost every one of us is caught:
“A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness.
“This illusion is a prison for us…Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison.”
February 6th, 2010 at 8:24 am
You and I seem here to be in agreement, HMJ.
If there is a disagreement, it would be signaled not by what you say but by what you imply. When you say:
you seem possibly to be implying that a deep and fruitful inquiry into the nature of the universe in which we live would lead us to reject the notion that there is any force or pattern of the sort I am describing, something with a systematic tendency to work destructively, to subvert the patterns of Wholeness that sustain and enhance life.
My own inquiries about destructiveness have been going on for more than 40 years, and have been pretty deep and integrative. And they lead me to believe that the position I put forward in “The Concept of Evil.” and in this piece here, above –that there is an “It” at work, and it is fitting to call it “Evil”– is ontologically valid.
So is there a disgreement on that point, or not?
February 6th, 2010 at 8:49 am
Andy wrote:
‘the position I put forward in “The Concept of Evil.” and in this piece here, above –that there is an “It” at work, and it is fitting to call it “Evil”– is ontologically valid.’
Would the “it” or “evil” still not be the result of human greed, ill-will and delusion, which Buddhists posit as the cause of our suffering? (not to say that natural disasters do not also cause suffering. They certainly do.) As such, whatever you call this force would be the collective result of human failure to love one-another and to have the wisdom to see that this is so.
February 6th, 2010 at 9:00 am
Re HMJ’s suggestion that HAARP could be involved in Haiti, there is reason to suspect such a conspiracy. For example, see William F. Engdahl’s article at Global Research Canada re the likelihood of vast oil deposits under Haiti and its readily exploitable mineral deposits.
February 6th, 2010 at 9:37 am
You ask a good question, Dan, and the answer is far from simple.
One piece that must be put forward is that causality in the human system operates at SEVERAL LEVELS. Not everything is reducible to the psychological. My theory of social evolution –which will be 40 years old this summer (in terms of when I got the idea), and which I still believe is compellingly valid– finds a (and perhaps THE) major ROOT of the destructiveness in civilization in the SYSTEMIC level. I know from experience that many people are unable to wrap their minds around the idea that the whole can be more than the sum of its parts (and that human affairs can be shaped by forces that are not a function of human nature), but it’s an idea important enough to stretch, if necessary, to get.
The major idea of that theory is here on NSB, and can be found at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=520.
Once that destructive force is introduced, it certainly has major wounding effects on human beings. So the cycling between the systemic and the psychological levels gets going. Greed and the rest play their roles. (Cf. my book OUT OF WEAKNESS: HEALING THE WOUNDS THAT DRIVE US TO WAR.)
Ultimately, as this “It” I call Evil works its way through history, the social evolutionary force that “selects for the ways of power” and that is indifferent to human welfare (per se) and the cultural patterns that are crafted by that social evolutionary force and the psychological patterns that ensue from the wounds suffered by people socialized to fit into cultures that are substantially hostile to human needs– all these work to reinforce each other and the “It” that works its way in the cultural system through the generation makes use of all the dark sides of these levels.
Fortunately, there isn’t just the dark side. And there are other patterns that the life force within us continually works to enhance our lives– the various ethics of love and justice and beauty and truth– and that are engaged with the dark patterns in that struggle I think worth calling “the battle between Good and Evil.”
February 6th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Andy writes:
Fortunately, there isn’t just the dark side. And there are other patterns that the life force within us continually works to enhance our lives– the various ethics of love and justice and beauty and truth– and that are engaged with the dark patterns in that struggle I think worth calling “the battle between Good and Evil.”
I take your notion of systemic vs personal(I did say collective) and wonder, has anyone taken a systems analysis approach to this problem to see if and how the system might be stabilized so that it does not become more chaotic or self-destruct and to possibly find a stable structure within in which good can predominate over evil. Can it be harder than economic or weather forecasting?
February 6th, 2010 at 11:32 am
My answer would be, yes, probably it would be a whole lot harder. The economy and the weather are complex, but the number of variables that are at work in such things as the whole pattern leading to the rise of Nazism in Germany –just to name one example– would be an order of magnitude or two larger than those of the weather or the economy.
February 6th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Progressives have been growing in number and energy for a lot longer than any Tea Partier or Tea Party activism. Progressive America is finally beginning to rediscover what’s most important about The Journey. PA is becoming increasingly eager and open to embrace broader conceptual changes which are required to properly heal and balance our broken system. To not be adequately open and at least half-way aware of these matters and concerns, in my humble opinion, is to inaccurately and recklessly attempt to persuade others. And the foremost golden rule in medicine is DO NO HARM. Hence, that is why I have no problem identifying “Evil” with certain figures who demonstrate patterns of thought and behavior which compel them to reject or deny some of the most viable ideas and solutions on the table.
I think it’s wise to have the term “Evil” ready in the arsenal anytime a right-winger attempts to assert their patented deceptive rhetoric. And by “deceptive rhetoric”, I’m specifically referring to the kind of divisive talking points made plain for all of America to see several days ago in Baltimore when the President finally found opportunity within the crisis to MINCE NO WORDS! As a result, the level of seriousness and sense of urgency throughout the entire country was dramatically raised.
YET, to me it seems the status of progressivism in America is still blossoming. Obama and the progressive Movement need more time to feed off each other, in my humble opinion, before we use the tactital term “Evil” within the broad national dialogue. When there’s more cohesiveness surrounding the message, when momentum is swifter, then yes, there’s no question this befitting language should be employed.
Illusions
- by Richard Bach -
Once there lived a village of creatures
along the bottom of a great crystal river.
The current of the river swept
silently over them all
young and old, rich and poor,
good and evil.
The current going its own way,
knowing only its own crystal self.
Each creature in its own manner
clung tightly to the twigs and rocks
at the river bottom, for clinging
was their way of life,
and resisting the current
what each had learned from birth.
But one creature said at last,
“I am tired of clinging!
Though I cannot see it with my eyes,
I trust that the current
knows where it is going.
I shall let go,
and let it take me where it will.
Clinging I shall die of boredom.”
The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool!
Let go, and that current you worship
will throw you tumbled and smashed
across the rocks,
and you shall die quicker than boredom!”
But the one heeded them not,
and taking a breath did let go,
and at once was tumbled and smashed
by the current across the rocks.
Yet in time,
as the creature refused to cling again,
the current lifted him free from the bottom,
and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream,
to whom he was a stranger, cried,
“See a miracle!
A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!
See the Messiah, come to save us all!”
And the one carried in the current said,
“I am no more Messiah than you.
The river delights to lift us free,
if only we dare let go.
Our true work is this voyage,
this adventure.”
But they cried the more, “Saviour!”
all the while clinging to the rocks,
and when they looked again
he was gone,
and they were left alone
making legends of a Saviour.
February 6th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Andy wrote:
“you seem possibly to be implying that a deep and fruitful inquiry into the nature of the universe in which we live would lead us to reject the notion that there is any force or pattern of the sort I am describing, something with a systematic tendency to work destructively, to subvert the patterns of Wholeness that sustain and enhance life.”
Andy,
I think the pivotal issue is whether these forces of destructiveness are seen as having “relative” or “absolute” reality. This is to say, our views about the nature of evil also imply its place in the universe in which we live, and…. “who we are” in the whole business. Each point of view entails a differing set of assumptions re- how to approach/deal with “evil.”
February 6th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I think I know what you mean, but I’m not sure. So perhaps you could explain in six sentences just what distinction you have in mind.
My belief about these “forces of destruction” is that they are not less real, in the world as it now is, than the forces that create Wholeness.
February 7th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Andy wrote:
The economy and the weather are complex, but the number of variables that are at work in such things as the whole pattern leading to the rise of Nazism in Germany –just to name one example– would be an order of magnitude or two larger than those of the weather or the economy.
That being the case, Andy, I don’t see how evil can be fought systemically when we can’t even consistently solve problems with fewer variables, such as economics and weather. I don’t see how we as individuals can do much more than become enlightened ourselves and try to teach others. As wisdom usually comes rather later in life than earlier, this is a painfully slow process. Hopefully some form of mass epiphany will speed the process. But in any case, there will have to be a body of wise people large enough and powerful enough to change the system before it will happen. This too is problematic because the forces opposing change will become further entrenched and resistant as their power is threatened.
Hardt and Negri, in their latest book, “Commonwealth” do see a gradual improvement. By proposing that evil springs forth as a corrupt form of love, they suggest that the forces of love are more fundamental and stronger. Perhaps this is so, or our civilization might have collapsed before now. We should also credit evil for having the wisdom to not “kill the goose that lays the golden egg”. I.e., evil must preserve something of the good in order to survive itself. Regardless, they say the battle is “ours” to win, but it must be fought constantly.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:32 am
I fail to see, Dan, how the number of variables and complexity involved with evil leads to your conclusions about our inability to fight evil systemically.
I am focusing, for example, on what I believe is the heart of evil’s operation in America today: what I call the Culture of the Lie.
The implication of seeing the problem in terms of the larger issue of evil, rather than in terms of the “health care issue” and the “protection against terror” issue, etc., is that one attends to the dimension of what’s happening that most directly manifests its being an expression of evil. So rather than focus on “no, there’s no death panel,” one focuses on the forces that are continually LYING to the American people in such ways. Rather than focus on the ways in which the problems of the failed Christmas underpants bomber are NOT specific to Obama’s leadership, one focuses on the FEAR-MONGERING of the right-wing in spreading disinformation. And so on down the line.
My remarks about complexity simply meant that one cannot understand all the interplay of forces sufficiently to PREDICT all of how they will unfold. THey do not mean that one cannot find fitting targets for battling against those forces IN TERMS OF THEIR ROLE IN THE EFFORTS OF EVIL TO GAIN CONTROL OVER THE DESTINY OF THIS NATION.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Andy wrote:
I fail to see, Dan, how the number of variables and complexity involved with evil leads to your conclusions about our inability to fight evil systemically…..My remarks about complexity simply meant that one cannot understand all the interplay of forces sufficiently to PREDICT all of how they will unfold. THey do not mean that one cannot find fitting targets for battling against those forces
I’m not saying we should not look for targets, Andy, but with the realization that because we can’t predict the outcome, any action taken by us may lead to further repression.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Of course. We NEVER know where history might take us. Nothing new about that. But one fights the fight as best one can, for we can do no other. The results are not in our hands to determine.
February 7th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Here’s a way of saying something about what’s real and what’s not and how much.
Around here the forest used to be a great chestnut forest, I’ve been told. It was the fungus or virus that came over with the Chinese chestnut, with which the CHinese tree had evolved a means of coexisting over some 40 million years, or something. But the defenseless American chestnuts, unevolved into accommodation (if not symbiosis, if still not friendly) between disease and host, succumbed to the disease. Shoots still come up, but the disease strikes them down in youth. The virus or fungus have struck down a part of the good order that WAS the Eastern forest. Removing a gem of the forest. And the health of the long-evolved symbiosis of the forest system, for what millions of years had wrought was a pretty well-developed system.
So tell me, is the virus less real than the good order the virus disrupted?
February 7th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
ABS wrote:
‘My belief about these “forces of destruction” is that they are not less real, in the world as it now is, than the forces that create Wholeness.’
We are in agreement, here. And again, I do not see a reason to change the word, though it probably needs to be followed, as least once in every essay by a short explanation caveat on the order of: “and this, specifically, is why and how I am using this word.” Otherwise, it can seem that there is no difference between your use of the ‘E-word’ and Teabaggers using it, for example, to describe Obama.
February 7th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
So, an attempt to clarify my statement:
‘I think the pivotal issue is whether these forces of destructiveness are seen as having “relative” or “absolute” reality.’
Naturally, the very subject itself, which has been debated for millenia, scarcely lends itself to a few pithy statements…at least for me. If I were able to do so, I’d probably be a Zen Master, which I most certainly am not!
Today, I re-read your elegant piece:
Sharing My Vision of Wholeness: “Our Pathways Into Deep Meaning”
12/9/05.
I’ll try to use it as a reference point in describing my own sense of the “evil as relative or absolute” question.
To begin, I would simply say that a key facet here is the relationship of any “pair of opposites” (eg. pleasure/, loss/gain, up/down, good/evil) to Wholeness Itself.
***
I also want to reveal that much what I have learned to date arises from transcendent experiences similar to yours – in my case initially induced by the ingestion of entheons, and later, through reading/contemplation, spiritual practices such as meditation, and through being in the presence of human beings who I can clearly see are more highly evolved than myself.
Various esoteric traditions say that the realization that there are, as you say, “pathways to Wholeness,” (or said otherwise, that there is a “spiritual path one can follow”) is usually the consequence of one or more primary experiences:
Deep suffering can propel this inward search; so too, a simple, but passionate sense of openness and curiosity about “Life.” In addition one may meet a person who speaks about “the Spiritual” and somehow just seems to *know* something, while also radiating a blend of deep calm, balance, love and joy. The last condition is that of encountering “teachings” (from any tradition) that just intuitively feel right and evoke a sense of deep faith, energy, and the motivation to explore further.
February 7th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
A few excerpts from your piece, which I think is a splendid place to begin.
You wrote:
A Spectrum of Meaningfulness
“Along that path leading out of the mundane into deeper meaning, three levels might be noted….
“A second level is comprised of those experiences whose meaningfulness feels so powerful that at a deep level they shape the course of our lives and our view of what life is about. A life-transforming insight that frees one from destructive patterns might be an example, or perhaps an experience of intimacy that changes one’s heart.
“And then there is the third level. Here the depth of meaningfulness seems to go beyond extending a continuum toward simply ‘more.’
“Rather, it is experienced as opening into another realm imbued with a special feeling of sacredness. These experiences —transcendent, they might be called, or mystical—suggest that the world as we normally see it may not be all there is. (Surveys conducted in this country suggest that experiences of this sort are widespread.)”
You go on to share:
Human Meanings and the Nature of our Reality
“The biggest mystery for me -—where what I have seen really doesn’t seem to fit onto my usual map of the world—has to do that sense of a deeper whole toward which the pathways seem to be converging.. In my life’s moments of intense spiritual awakening, of which one was this spring (2004), I’ve felt I’ve glimpsed something Whole that’s beyond our ken, that envelopes us, that is of great beauty and worthy of our love, that is sacred.
“The deeper we humans go down any of these pathways, apparently, the more suffused our consciousness seems to become with this wonderful sense of a wholeness more mysterious, more wonderful, than our solely rational and naturalistic maps can capture….
“Whenever I’ve encountered a truth that felt deeply true, it has seemed infused with a spirit emanating from some deep and beautiful web of interconnectedness.
“It’s a wonderful feeling, this sense of an underlying wholeness….Through the centuries, and across cultures, Wholeness has been at the core of the mystics’ visions.
An Empirical Mysticism?
“Perhaps the mystics might best be seen as people who have traveled down these pathways and reached the trailhead. From their extraordinary —their most rich and wonderful—experiences, they have reported experiencing a Oneness permeated with beauty and love that is —the mystics seem certain—the fundamental truth of our cosmic reality, and the key to our fulfillment.
“That sense of certainty in the mystics’ testimony brings up another facet of our experiences of deep meaning. The mystic’s conviction is not, I’m convinced, mere intellectual cop-out or wishful thinking. It is, rather, a function of the special nature of the experience.
“If the sense of wholeness came as just another way of seeing —like how the world looks double when we cross our eyes, or how distant night lights get all fuzzy if we focus up close—the mystic vision would not carry much weight. But the reality is that these moments command our allegiance because of their special experiential quality: they bring with them the sense of their undeniable truth!
February 7th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Yes, I have had such visions. Yet I’ve also seen how the force of destruction is powerful in the civilized system. Perhaps there’s a way in which the WHoleness is bigger and more fundamental than the destructiveness. But it is also part of the nature of things at this stage of the cosmic evolutionary process –or the evolution of life on earth, or the saga of humankind– that wholeness is most incomplete, and brokenness is part of the picture.
As for those opposites you mention:
I believe that good/evil does not belong on that list. That’s because I do not believe that the way things are is all part of a plan: I see the Wholeness project as being one that is EMERGENT, and not pre-existent, like some perfection that’s God and that’s Almighty. WHen I look at the world, as I’ve been doing pretty hard for the past almost 50 years, what I see is something that’s TRYING TO COME INTO EXISTENCE, and whose incompleteness creates space for genuinely destructive forces THAT ARE REALLY NOT ALL RIGHT, and not part of the WAY THINGS SHOULD BE.
Maybe it is useful to say that we couldn’t have an UP without also having a DOWN. I think it would be a form of confusion, or wishful thinking, to imagine that there is a need for EVIL in order for there to be a GOOD. Or that the two are together part of the same Wholeness.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Very complex ideas, Andy, and not amenable to easy answers, that’s for sure.
My understanding is that what we see and how we interpret what we see both depend very much on our individual states (and stages of consciousness). I very much believe that this principle applies to the concerns under discussion regarding “good and evil.”
First, a few examples of this idea:
Charles Tart has proposed a state-specific science strategy as a method of researching discrete altered states of consciousness, such as the advanced meditative states that expert meditators report.
Psychology has definitely shown that it is common for motivation to skew perception. Ram Dass joked that whenever he was caught up in his sexual preoccupations, he would see everybody through the lenses of only three categories: either potentially makeable, a competitor for someone who is potentially makeable…. or irrelevant!
Recently, disciplines such as the sociology of knowledge and hermeneutics have emphasized the contextual embeddedness of knowledge and the inevitable role of interpretation.
Jean Gepser, in his tour de force, The Ever-Present Origin (1948 in
German – Ursprung und Gegenwart), has delineated the 4 “structures of consciousness” through which humankind has evolved to date.
Delineating these stages of development reflected in the unfolding of human culture and consciousness, Gebser notes that each of these the various structures of consciousness are revealed by their differing relationships to space and time. Each of these emergent stages embodies a distinctive framework for perception and calls forth new potentials within us.
*****
The challenge in doing justice to and understanding the existence of good and evil, I believe, is that we need to be able to perceive from at least 2 states of awareness, either simultaneously or in succession.
February 7th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Andy,
I am going to argue that the very consequential business of “evil” is simultaneously real and unreal – and that this paradoxical kind of understanding matters very much.
So, the question can now be stated: do issues such as good and evil appear differently when seen from states (or stages) of consciousness involving more fragmentation than wholeness?
An evocative illustration: (fromhttp://www.gaiamind.org/Aurobindo.html):
“Sri Aurobindo – political activist, Indian Yogi, and spiritual master -
(1872-1950) saw the underlying thrust of the entire phenomenal world is a spiritual evolution in consciousness toward a situation in which all material forms will reveal the indwelling spirit.
“He postulated several states of consciousness, such as the Overmind, Intuitive mind, Higher mind, and Illumined mind.
“These states he saw as interconnected and revealing different levels of reality and unity. Normal waking consciousness is steeped in individualism, while the higher states reveal an ultimate unity.
“Psyche or soul was the manifestation of the divine as it occurs within individuals, for the purpose of reuniting with the universal.
“Sri Aurobindo was a mystic who achieved his ascending levels of consciousness through yoga and meditation.
“Yet, in 1926 he had a profound experience of the Overmind descending into him, and stressed that it is not merely transcendence that we are seeking, but an integration of that higher mind with our involvement in the daily world.
“In this way, he described his spiritual practice as Integral Yoga, for it integrated the many systems of India, with daily practice and political and worldly activity.
*********
Though our minds would be laughably finite in relation to what we might imagine as “the mind of God,” still, we are the only sentient beings we know of who can “experience” intimations of the Infinite, the Eternal, the Absolute. (If cats can do this also, they’re not telling, tho’ they do smile a lot).
It is our good fortune that we can study, compare and contrast (and in time experience) the many traditions that have documented these phenomena in exquisite detail.
A few of these include the writings of the Christian mystic, Meister Eckhard;
accounts of the life and words of the Jewish “Enlightened One,” Jesus;
and the writings of many spiritual masters belonging to the traditions of Advaita (“non-dual”) Vedanta, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism,, and the Sufi sect of Islam).
Here we are blessed with extensive bodies of knowledge concerning various levels and types of experiences of Wholeness, Interdependence, or Oneness.
**********
In describing your own experiences of deep meaning, Andy, you have quite beautifully suggested that it can be useful to delineate various “levels” of such experiences:
“…A second level is comprised of those experiences whose meaningfulness feels so powerful that at a deep level they shape the course of our lives and our view of what life is about. A life-transforming insight that frees one from destructive patterns might be an example, or perhaps an experience of intimacy that changes one’s heart.
“And then there is the third level. Here the depth of meaningfulness seems to go beyond extending a continuum toward simply ‘more.’
“Rather, it is experienced as opening into another realm imbued with a special feeling of sacredness. These experiences —transcendent, they might be called, or mystical—suggest that the world as we normally see it may not be all there is. (Surveys conducted in this country suggest that experiences of this sort are widespread)….
“The biggest mystery for me -—where what I have seen really doesn’t seem to fit onto my usual map of the world—has to do that sense of a deeper whole toward which the pathways seem to be converging.. In my life’s moments of intense spiritual awakening, of which one was this spring (2004), I’ve felt I’ve glimpsed something Whole that’s beyond our ken, that envelopes us, that is of great beauty and worthy of our love, that is sacred.
“The deeper we humans go down any of these pathways, apparently, the more suffused our consciousness seems to become with this wonderful sense of a wholeness more mysterious, more wonderful, than our solely rational and naturalistic maps can capture….
“Perhaps the mystics might best be seen as people who have traveled down these pathways and reached the trailhead. From their extraordinary —their most rich and wonderful—experiences, they have reported experiencing a Oneness permeated with beauty and love that is —the mystics seem certain—the fundamental truth of our cosmic reality, and the key to our fulfillment.”
February 8th, 2010 at 11:12 am
I agree, Hanu Man Ji, that these matters are complex, and beyond complex, are not easy to wrap one’s mind around.
And I think there’s a good chance that the notion of various states of consciousness (presumably affording access to –for want of a better phrase– different “levels of reality”) could be part of the answer to these questions.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:09 am
HMJ wrote:
“I am going to argue that the very consequential business of “evil” is simultaneously real and unreal – and that this paradoxical kind of understanding matters very much.
“So, the question can now be stated: do issues such as good and evil appear differently when seen from states (or stages) of consciousness involving more fragmentation than wholeness?”
*****
ABS wrote:
“I think there’s a good chance that the notion of various states of consciousness (presumably affording access to –for want of a better phrase– different ‘levels of reality’) could be part of the answer to these questions.”
***
We behold a subtle and intricate jewel with many sparkling facets…
I would say that as far as there are questions about the nature of evil and its relationship to Wholeness (and experiences of Wholeness) – the jury is still out.
Other questions: Are “enlightenment” experiences identical with all experiences revealing “deep wholeness?” What *are* enlightenment experiences and how is evil understood when seen from these states of purported clarity?
February 9th, 2010 at 2:19 am
Huston Smith’s stature as an august professor, his highly regarded book, The Religions of Man, along with his research into psychedelics and mysticism all have contributed to his reputation as a sort of “elder statesman of consciousness.”
Smith’s book, Forgotten Truth, he outlines a multi-leveled vision of Being or Reality – and multi-layered view of the human person, the self. As such Smith offers a basic, skeletal depiction of what he describes as “The Primordial Tradition” (similarly called by Aldous Huxley, “The Perennial Philosophy”).
*******
Smith observes that during the scientific era we have learned to value the particular kinds of knowledge that provided us with God-like powers of “prediction and control.” Like children dazzled by exciting toys, we humans have thrilled to our rapidly growing power to gain objective knowledge about, and mastery of our environment.
Yet, this Faustian boon, has come with a heavy price. We have been seduced into the belief that the material, corporeal reality is the only reality there is. In the very process of freeing ourselves from the “spell” of superstition, we have become hypnotized by another equally tragic view of the world…..one which effectively disallows whole dimensions of existence.
Thus, as Smith relates, “in a single stroke the mansion of Being was reduced to the ground floor.”
Some of us are coming full circle and recognizing, along with Smith, that each of these levels of reality can be studied separately. He states:
“The marvels of the terrestrial plane are being unveiled at an astonishing rate by the physical sciences. The intermediate realm adds life and consciousness: biology helps to understand the former, and for light on the latter we turn to the durable findings of phenomenology, depth psychology, and parapsychology, as well as aspects of shamanism and folk religion.
“The theologies of the great traditions describe God’s knowable nature (the celestial plane) from a variety of cultural angles, and the literature of mysticism carries the mind as far as it can journey into God’s absolute and infinite depths.”
February 9th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Two very interesting diagrams illustrating the above can be found at:
http://www.kheper.net/topics/greatchainofbeing/Primordial_Tradition.html
Smith makes the argument that a deepening or expanding of our perceptions of self and world leads us to behold a natural holarchy of levels.
In reviewing religion through both “rumored and recorded history” Smith concludes that the Primordial Tradition, as he calls it, reveals itself to be the intuitive and uncontrived “human outlook….because it is consonant with the complete complement of human sensibilities. He adds:”It is the vision…mystics have seen and prophets have enunciated.”
Thus, as the diagrams show, the multiplicity of religious perspectives actually reflect an overarching unity, as when a single beam of light travels through a prism, offering us the varigated colors of the rainbow.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Consider this “mystical experience,” reported Canadian psychiatrist Richard M. Bucke around the turn of the century. The account comes from his study of these sorts of experiences in his book, Cosmic Consciousness:
“I had spent the evening in a great city, with two friends, reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. We parted at midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodging. My mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images, and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind.
“All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next, I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe.
“Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then…
“I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain.
“The vision lasted a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed. I knew that what the vision showed was true. I had attained to a point of view from which I saw that it must be true.
“That view, that conviction, I may say that consciousness, has never, even during periods of the deepest depression, been lost.”
February 10th, 2010 at 1:24 am
Again from Bucke…..
“The life and joy within me were becoming so intense that by evening I became restless and wandered about the rooms, scarcely knowing what to do with myself.
“Retiring early that I might be alone, soon all objective phenomena were shut out. I was seeing and comprehending the sublime meaning of things, the reasons for all that had before been hidden and dark. The great truth that life is a spiritual evolution, that this life is but a passing phase in the soul’s progression, burst upon my astonished vision with overwhelming grandeur.
“Oh, I thought, if this is what it means, if this is the outcome, then pain is sublime! Welcome centuries, eons, of suffering if it brings us to this! And still the splendor increased. Presently what seemed to be a swift, oncoming tidal wave of splendor and glory ineffable came down upon me, and I felt myself being enveloped, swallowed up.
“I felt myself going, losing myself. Then I was terrified, but with a sweet terror. I was losing my consciousness, my identity, but was powerless to hold myself. Now came a period of rapture, so intense that the universe stood still, as if amazed at the unutterable majesty of the spectacle! Only one in all the infinite universe! The All-loving, the Perfect One! The Perfect Wisdom, truth, love and purity!
“And with the rapture came the insight. In that same wonderful moment of what might be called supernal bliss, came illumination. I saw with intense inward vision the atoms or molecules, of which seemingly the universe is composed—I know not whether material or spiritual—rearranging themselves, as the cosmos (in its continuous, everlasting life) passes from order to order.
“What joy when I saw there was no break in the chain—not a link left out—everything in its place and time. Worlds, systems, all blended in one harmonious whole.”
February 10th, 2010 at 1:36 am
One man’s experience. A frivolous flight of fancy? The saccharine fantasies of an overactive and sentimental imagination? The hallucinatory workings of a deluded mind?
What are we to make of this account? Might it shine any light upon questions of good, evil, and wholeness?
February 10th, 2010 at 11:27 am
“Sub Ek” (All is One).
—Neem Karoli Baba, Himalayan saint
February 10th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
From MEISTER ECKHART, Christian mystic (1260-1328)
—”The soul is not like God: she is identical with Him.”
***
— “God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you … let God be God in you.”
***
__________________________________________________
— Beyond ‘God’ lies the ‘Godhead’; that is, ‘God’ as Father, Son and Spirit is merely representation of the true God.
— The ground of God and the ground of the human soul are the same; thus God, or union with God, is to be sought within oneself: It is in the depths of our own being that ‘the birth of God’s Son in the soul’ occurs.
— God cannot be ‘known’ rationally, but only through immediate experience.
*************
Eckhart distinguished ‘God’ from the ‘Godhead.’ God as Godhead is that eternity from which all things emerge — that infinite ‘Deity’ which lies within and beyond all that is finite.
The Godhead exists as pure potentiality — “that which is” — before all distinctions have been made. It is the form which is formless, the ‘no-thingness’ from which all things originally spring forth – and the ineffable Unity/Eternity/Life into which all things are subsequently withdrawn.
The problem is that we cannot conceive of, or in any way name the Godhead; as such it can only be understood as a ‘naught.’ For, to name, conceptualize, and thereby limit the Godhead is to make the ‘Godhead’ into a finite ‘God.’ According to Eckhart, praise and worship, are inevitably directed toward such a merely finite ‘God’.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:53 am
“Through profound insight and deep meditation, these latent roots can be released bringing successive degrees of freedom, called stages of enlightenment.
“In the first enlightenment stage the confusions about the way, doubts about freedom, and misunderstandings about the self are released. In the next two enlightenment states the instinctual roots of greed and aggression are weakened and then released.
“In the final stage the last unconscious clinging to reflined states of consciousness and attachments to any sense of self are dissolved.”
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“Buddhist teaching show how human development can take a significant step beyond the awareness and accomodation of drives that is the fruit of most Western clinical practices. It teaches that these deepest roots can be transformed in a way that brings a degree of freedom unknown in the West.”
—–Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart
February 11th, 2010 at 1:00 am
“To construct a God in the human image is objectionable only to the extent that we have a poor image of ourselves, for example, as egos in bags of skin. But as we can begin to visualize man as the behavior of a unified field – immensely complex and comprising the whole universe – there is less and less reason against conceiving god in That image.”
Alan Watts, Beyond Theology
February 12th, 2010 at 12:43 am
“Oneness is the source of love. Real love is the One celebrating itself as the two.”
— Ram Dass
February 12th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
“Our original nature is one of perfect harmony with the universe, a harmony not of similarity or correspondence, but of identity.
“…Beyond all this confusion and asymmetry there is a deep harmony and proportion without us and within us that satisfies us when we submit to it, when we take it as it is, but can never be perceived or conceived intellectually.”
—R.H. Blyth, Games Zen Masters Play
February 12th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
PIERRE TEILHARD de CHARDIN:
“In the most general form and from the point of view of physics, love is the internally affectively apprehended aspect of the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world, centre to centre…Love is power of producing intercentric relationship.
“It is present, therefore (at least in a rudimentary state), in all natural centres liiving and preliving, which make up the world; and it represents, too, the most profound, most direct, and most creative form of inter-action that is possible to conceive between those centres…Love, in fact, is the expression and agent of Universal Synthesis.”
*************
KEN WILBER:
“The inner unity of opposites is hardly an idea confined to mystics, Eastern or Western. If we look to modern say physics, the field in which Western intellect had made its greatest advances, what we find is another version of reality as a union of opposites.
“In relativity theory, for example, the old opposites of rest vs. motion have become totally indistinguishable, that is, ‘each is both.’ …Likewise, the split between wave and particle vanishes into “wavicles. and the contrast between structure vs. function evaporates. Even the age-old separation of mass from energy had fallen to Einstein’s E=mc2, and these ancient ‘opposites’ are now viewed as merely two aspects of one reality.
****
“A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness, any more than a fork could grasp the ocean.”
February 13th, 2010 at 4:58 am
Here are some replies to various points in this long thread. At least from the first half.
“Unless I am mistaken, you and Don Beck are thinking in terms that prevent the perception of a destructive dynamic being a major problem in the unfolding of the evolution of civilization and of civilized societies.”
If that is correct, I would like to add the analogy of microbiology: What I learned in my first microbiology class is that all germs, no matter how harmless or beneficial in their proper place, can be deadly when in a place they shouldn’t be. Here, the stages of growth of a culture or a people will pass through primitive worldviews like tribalism – and they are fine when they are at a tribal stage. But going back to a tribal stage when the level of complexity of the culture should be several levels further on, can be pernicious.
This accounts for your “brokenness” in the Spiral Dynamics view.
“But does “absence of love” capture what is happening in a person who is driven by a sadistic lust to inflict pain? When we read about some of the nightmares of history, about children being murdered while their parents are forced to watch, do we find it sufficient to say that what’s being manifested is simply an “absence of love”?”
I believe the missing concept here is sociopath or psychopath. I have read a couple of books on the subject, and suggest you do too. (The Sociopath Next Door and Without Conscience were the ones I read.) These are people who have no conscience at all. It is almost impossible for a normal person to imagine. It’s like a birth defect – as if they were born without limbs or without eyes. To have no conscience also means no compassion, no caring. It could be interpreted as an “absence of love” but in the case of the sociopath/psychopath, no amount of dealing with them with love and compassion will induce it in them. And that’s the part that Buddhism can’t deal with. If someone is physiologically incapable of compassion, there is nothing – not spiritual, physical, or psychological – you can do to give them compassion, caring, or conscience.
“Well, Todd, yes it does imply something about development that is NOT RELATIVISTIC. It implies that there is embedded in human nature a set of needs and positive life-serving potentialities such that it is indeed BETTER for a child to be love than to be abused. I am NOT claiming “A” proper form of development. But I am claiming that human nature brings with it a valid way of talking about better and worse forms of development.”
I agree with this. There are directions of development that are better and those that are worse. However, it is interesting that you use the term “development”. While the lower levels of development are stages one goes through (a child is less developed morally than an adult, without being “evil”, and a primitive tribe is at a lower level of development culturally without being “evil”), but the evil seems to come in when leaders purposely push society to go down to a more primitive level that is destructive to society, for their own monetary gain. It isn’t the level itself that is evil, but the intention and the effect, the unbalance and inappropriateness. It seems to me that right wing leaders have been very deliberately fostering fear and selfishness and primitive thinking and authoritarianism, in order to manipulate society to shed democracy, equality, and justice and go back to a feudal, hierarchical, authoritarian and cruel society that they can dominate. This is analogous to the mental and physical torture that causes a prisoner to lose his mind. The sadistic mind that enjoys this, and sees it as a game, and humans as merely game pieces, is indeed evil.
February 13th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Ken Wilber:
On the Nature of a Post-Metaphysical Spirituality
Response to Habermas and Weis
Shambhala Publications
*******
Appendix 1: On The Need for a Post-Metaphysical and Critical Spirituality
In my opinion, all of the holons of existence (including the basic structures) are, in part, these types of evolutionary memories or habits.
And, for the present discussion, it should be remembered that the higher levels are still evolving themselves, and thus they are great potentials, not pregiven absolutes, but this still does not prevent them from being able to release us from the constrictions of the lower realms.
8.1 As indicated in the text, states of consciousness are very important, but for them to contribute to development they must become structures/traits.
Planes or realms are important, but they cannot be conceived pre-critically as ontologically independent realities, but rather as coproductions of perceiving selves (see note 8.2 [which follows]).
Thus, the simplest generalization is that individual development involves waves, streams, and self, without in any way denying the importance of all of those others factors, from states to planes to numerous heterarchical processes and patterns.
8.2 In my view, the basic structures in the Great Nest are simultaneously levels of both knowing and being, epistemology and ontology. For reasons discussed in the text (namely, modernity rejected most ontology and allowed only epistemology), I usually refer to the basic structures as “the basic structures of consciousness” (or “the basic levels of consciousness”); but their ontological status should not be overlooked as long as their internal connection to consciousness is not ignored.
Generally, the perennial philosophy refers to the former as levels of consciousness (or levels of selfhood ), and the latter as realms or planes of existence (or levels of reality ), which we should understand as inextricably interwoven.
Thus, as Huston Smith pointed out (Forgotten Truth), the body level of consciousness corresponds with the terrestrial realm or plane of existence; the mind level of consciousness corresponds with the intermediate realm or plane of existence; the soul level of consciousness corresponds with the celestial plane of existence; and the spirit level of consciousness corresponds with the infinite plane of existence.
Since these are correlative structures (levels of consciousness and planes of existence), I include both of them in the idea of basic structures or basic levels of the Great Nest.
February 13th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
(con’t)
…..as I pointed out in Eye to Eye, consciousness can turn its attention to the material plane (using its epistemological eye of flesh), the intermediate plane (using its epistemological eye of mind), or the celestial plane (using its epistemological eye of contemplation).
The material, intermediate, and celestial planes are the ontological levels; in Eye to Eye I refer to them using the terms sensibilia, intelligibilia, and transcendelia (i.e., the objects in those planes or realms).
The eyes of flesh, mind, and contemplation are the epistemological levels correlated with (and disclosing) those ontological planes of sensibilia, intelligibilia, and transcendelia.
(Of course, this is just using a simple three-level version of the Great Nest; if we use five levels, there are then five planes of existence and five correlative levels of consciousness, and so on. In my scheme, since I often use 7 to 9 general levels of consciousness, there are likewise 7 to 9 general realms or planes of reality.)
…Premodern philosophy was unabashedly metaphysical (i.e., it assumed the nonproblematic ontological existence of all the various planes, levels, and realms of transcendental reality); whereas modern philosophy was primarily critical (it investigated the structures of the subject of thinking, and called into question the ontological status of the objects of thought), and thus modernity brought a much needed critical attitude to bear on the topic (even if it went overboard in its critical zeal and sometimes erased all objects of knowledge except the empirical and sensorimotor).
A crippling problem with the perennial traditions (and the merely metaphysical approaches) is that they tend to discuss ontological levels (planes or axes) as if they were pregiven, independent of the perceiver of those domains, thus overlooking the substantial amount of modern and postmodern research showing that cultural backgrounds and social structures profoundly mold perceptions in all domains (i.e., the perennial philosophy did not sufficiently differentiate the four quadrants). For all these reasons, simply talking about “planes” as completely independent ontological realities is extremely problematic–yet another reason I have tended to emphasize the epistemological facets over the merely ontological ones.
February 13th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty,
and the beginning of confusion.
Tao Te Ching, 6th century B.C.
February 13th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Selected comments by R.H. Bythe on the classic Zen poem, “Hsinhsinming:”
NOT THOROUGHLY UNDERSTANDING THE UNITY OF THE WAY, BOTH (ACTIVITY AND QUIESSENCE) ARE FAILURES
“…enlightenment and illusion, life and death and Nirvana, salvation and damnation, profit and loss…all these are our lot and portion, from moment to moment, if we do not real-ize that the Great Way is one and indivisible, however we delude ourselves that we have divided it.”
*******
OBEYING OUR NATURE, WE ARE IN ACCORD WITH THE WAY, WANDERING FREELY, WITHOUT ANNOYANCE
“Our own nature is not different from the nature of all things…there is nothing unnatural. The fiends of Hell, the monsters of the deepest seas, the bacteria of our bosoms, the perversions of maniacs cannot surprise or disgust us.
“Living by Zen or without it, in perpetual fear and irritation; sadism and masochism; the destruction of life and beauty; the annihilation of the universe – none of these things can appall us. [They are all the natural consequences of] our true nature, overlaid…with illusions and superimposed habits that have become instincts…”
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INDEED, NOT HATING THE SIX DUSTS {THE SENSES, BODY, AND ITS THOUGHTS) IS IDENTICAL WITH ENLIGHTENMENT
“This absence of hatred, intolerance, disgust, righteous indignation…is itself the state of Buddhahood. This negativeness, however, is not that of the opposite of affirmation. It is not the passive condition it seems to be, neither can it be described by the words, ‘love your enermies.’
“It is not absence of feeling or indiffrence, but some unnameable attitude of mind in which evil is accepted as such [though in no way] condoned.”
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February 15th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
“…..The great states of consciousness are converted to permanent waking realities…permanent traits by developing through the levels of consciousness….
“In [these] cases one is developing one’s capacity to experience higher states by converting them into permanent acquisitions.
“States that are normally unconscious have been made conscious; states that are normally temporary have been made permanent…. One’s consciousness fluidly unfolds from gross to subtle to causal embrace, with each expansion of consciousness including and enveloping more and more realities.
“One thus increasingly gains a liberation from the binding torment of being identified with lesser, smaller, shallower states…and gains an increasing liberation from their binding spell, until one can transcend and include all states in pure…Consciousness as such–an ultimate realization or enlightenment that is known by many names, but the Great Liberation will do.”
—– Ken Wilber
February 15th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
“Ken Wilber: we can use a fairly simplified developmental scheme—we can just say egocentric, ethnocentric, worldcentric, and then we sometimes add something like Kosmocentric. Those stages represent one’s identity, moving from an identification merely with “me” (egocentric) to an identification with “us” (ethnocentric) to an identification with “all of us” (worldcentric) to an identification with the All (Kosmocentric). As permanent realizations, those are stages; they develop and unfold…. [it has been said that]: states are free; stages have to be earned.
“In any event, peak experiences or altered states tend to be temporary, transient—they come and go. They can be very important and very profound; it’s just that they don’t last. For example, an initial state experience of satori can be very important before it becomes a permanent or stage realization.
“But you have to be at least at a worldcentric stage of development or it’s not going to stick. You can awaken the deeper psychic, or the soul, and get a taste of it, but it fades….
“[and] when people at lower levels of development have a temporary state experience of the subtle soul, or causal Self, and then they revert next week or the week after that, and then they usually feel pretty cranky about what’s gone on—
Cohen: Very cranky. Even more than cranky.
But when they fall out of that perspective, because maybe they didn’t want to face whatever they had to face in themselves—then what they do is fall back into the level of development that they were in before they had that realization.
So suddenly they’re not seeing things in the new way anymore, and they embrace the psychology and worldview that they had before, and then they see the experience that they had in a higher state from the perspective of the lower stage. So of course, now it’s seen in a completely distorted way.
“And the thing is, stages can’t be skipped. For example, take atoms, molecules, cells, organisms. An atom can’t have an experience of a cell and bypass being a molecule. It just doesn’t work like that
February 15th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
As they used to say in olden days, “I wish to beg the reader’s indulgence.” The post immediately above somehow was sent (not sure how!) before it was ready for prime time. Sorry for its somehat unfinished quality….
It is from a dialogue between Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen (in the magazine, EnlightenmentNext: May-July 2004).
February 16th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
“Now we are all exercising the love of power. But a day will come when this world of ours will be inundated with the power that loves. Only the power that loves can change the world.
“With our loving hearts, we identify and become one with what others are. This power that loves can solve world problems. This power is full of self-giving, not with a sense of sacrifice, but with the feeling of serving all humanity as our own brothers and sisters. Through both our loving silence and devoted service, we contribute to the betterment of the entire world.”
— Sri Chinmoy
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Oneness-Heart-Tears-and-Smiles worldwide humanitarian service:
In the four decades since he has lived in America, Sri Chinmoy has forged one of the most notable life stories of our times. A prolific and widely popular author, artist and musician, he has inspired a new momentum for world harmony through over 700 global concerts; in cultural, humanitarian and spiritual programmes on six continents; in the publication of over 1500 books; and through a prodigious outpouring of acrylic paintings and artwork that has been displayed in galleries worldwide.
Since 1970, at the invitation of then United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, Sri Chinmoy has led twice-weekly silence at the United Nations Headquarters for delegates and staff of all faiths.
In recognition of his lifetime of service for world betterment, many significant awards have been conferred on Sri Chinmoy. These include the highest national awards from many nations, such as the Order of Balboa of Panama, the Presidential Medallion of Macedonia, the Mother Teresa Award, the Gold Papal Seals, UNESCO’s Nehru Medallion, the Gandhi Peace Award, the Jesse Owens Humanitarian Award, plus awards from many universities including Cambridge, as well as several honorary degrees.
At the heart of Sri Chinmoy’s lifetime of service is an unwavering belief both in the essential goodness of the human spirit and in a future when all the nations and peoples of the world will live in harmony, united by a sense of oneness, concern and love.
February 16th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
More on the complexities and gradations of consciousness. In terms of “inner archeology” we all come in layers…and so does human culture as a whole…
This excerpt from “Roadmap to Reality: Consciousness, Worldviews, and the Blossoming of Human Spirit” by Thomas J. Elpel and Bonnie Andrich, discusses evil in light of this layering of consciousness.
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“Although our culture has essentially left magical thinking behind, much of our thought is still rooted in mythical thinking, defined by a God-and-the-Devil outlook, where all issues are black and white, right and wrong, and there is no middle ground. It is the world we saw on television decades ago, where the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black.
“Mythical thinking tends to be highly ethnocentric and nationalistic. There is tremendous allegiance to one religion, one team, one viewpoint, and everyone else is simply wrong. It was this pattern of thought at work in Iran when their soccer team beat the Americans in 1997 and the entire country partied in the streets for days, chanting slogans like, “We have beaten the Great Satan!” It is the same kind of worldview espoused by the religious right in our country, which perceives no gray areas in issues like gun control or foreign policy.
“The mythical worldview was prevalent at the height of the Cold War when there was a clear line between who was right and who was wrong, and Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire.” These days we keep the good-versus-evil drama alive with the War on Terror by dropping bombs on people who didn’t like us to begin with and now have more reason than ever to hate us. It is a strategy that perpetuates fear and conflict, sustaining the mythical worldview.
“The objective worldview has been building momentum for decades, applying what might be called scientific reasoning or linear thought to the issues of an increasingly complicated, diversified world. Objective thinking reminds people that other religions or other ways of being are equally valid, that no one has the monopoly on the truth. It is a worldview where there is more than one right answer and many shades of gray. This objectivity translates to unprecedented individuality.
“The objective worldview is spreading, but already it is inadequate to deal with an increasingly complex world where all cultures are rapidly melding into one. Survival demands broad, creative leaps of integrated or holistic logic, connecting together many diversified concepts….”
February 17th, 2010 at 12:57 am
It is interesting that significant controversy has followed Sri Chinmoy, the spiritual teacher I quoted above.
Allegations (unproven, as far as I know) included misrepresentation and sexual misconduct. Whether or not these are true, the issue itself sheds light on the matter of the evolution of consciousness.
Speaking about spiritual teachers, Kornfield has suggested that there are many whose enlightenment is genuine, and yet still partial, incomplete. It might be said of such teachers that, while having attained certain advanced levels of awareness, these function only within certain domains and limits. In such cases “uncooked seeds” remain dormant, still locked away in other, darker compartments of their psyche.
And when those seeds sprout — Look out…Here comes trouble!
The usual suspects? Misuse of power, money, sex, or drugs.
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Speaking about the junction of spiritual teacher and the community of students around him or her, Kornfield observes that:
“If the practice of the community does not address the unfinished family issues and pain of its members, then the deficiencies will continue to intensify…”
He proposes that the key to overcoming these difficulties is awareness. As a first step this includes honest questioning. Members must be willing to ask their community: “How are we lost, attached, and addicted, and how are we benefiting, awakening, and opening?”
Naming the demons with honesty and kindness, he advises, has the power to dispel illusions. He adds:
“We must do something even more difficult than posing questions. We must tell the truth to ourselves and we must speak the truth in our communities… Each troubling area, any illusions about the practice and the teacher, exploitive behavior, or unclear moral codes must be addressed. Teachers [as well as students] have to be able to deal with the underlying problems in themselves, whether old wounds, cultural and family history, isolation, or their own grandiosity.”
February 17th, 2010 at 1:27 am
In one of the Buddhist traditions one kind of “incomplete enlightenment” is known as “Zen Sickness.”
When discussing the reality we call “evil,” I believe we can and should talk about ascending (or deepening) levels of consciousness. However, this is much easier said than done. There certainly can be “contamination” of a higher level by another more primitive, less developed one.
This can be seen when a spiritual teacher who seemingly exhibits many traits reflective of genuine spiritual maturity, acts out (perhaps sexually) – for all intensive purposes suddenly showing up like a horny adolescent.
Such situations often reflect the distortion which occurs when “spiritual” language and concepts are used to create lacunas at the psychological level. The need here is to shine the light of awareness not merely to illuminate “higher levels,” but to uncover unfinished emotional business, repressed material, and conflicts residing in the lower unconscious levels of the psyche.
I know of a number of cases, in which the authentic and ethical spiritual teachers (many of whom are quite advanced in some areas) have made the choice to begin treatment with a psychotherapist in order to clean up their psychological act.
And this is where the “factor of enlightenment” (one of seven) known as mindfulness is paramount.
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February 17th, 2010 at 1:30 am
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Kornfield writes:
“We must see that spirituality is a continual movement away from compartmentalization and separation and toward embracing all of life. We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life.
“When we do, we will face the patterns from personal history, [and] the conditioning that shields us from the pains of the past. To be free is not to rise above these patterns – that would only make new compartments – but to go into and through them, to bring them into our hearts.
“We must find in ourselves a willingness to go into the dark, to feel the holes and deficiencies, the weakness, rage, or insecurity that we have walled off in ourselves. We must bring a deep attention to the stories we tell about these shadows, to see what is the underlying truth.
“Then, as we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not. We will see that each is made from a lack of trust in ourselves, our hearts, and the world. As we see through them, our world expands.
“As the light of awareness illuminates these stories and ideas and the pain, fear, or emptiness that underlies them, a deeper truth can show itself. By accepting and feeling each of these areas, a genuine wholeness, sense of well-being, and strength can be discovered.”
February 21st, 2010 at 1:30 am
A clarification of stages of development in the context of Wholeness.
I would submit that Final Wholeness (if we may use such a term) involves – not the finitude whereby each discrete level of development culminates in an experience of “ripeness” or maturity – but rather in an experience of the infinite, of fullness without end. This state is sometimes known as “enlightenment” or “spiritual liberation.”
February 21st, 2010 at 1:33 am
Ken Wilber:
Egocentric, Ethnocentric, and Worldcentric
“To show what is involved with levels or stages, let’s use a very simple model possessing only 3 of them. If we look at moral development, for example, we find that an infant at birth has not yet been socialized into the culture’s ethics and conventions; this is called the preconventional stage. It is also called egocentric, in that the infant’s awareness is largely self-absorbed.
“But as the young child begins to learn its culture’s rules and norms, it grows into the conventional stage of morals. This stage is also called ethnocentric, in that it centers on the child’s particular group, tribe, clan, or nation, and it therefore tends to exclude those not of one’s group.
“But at the next major stage of moral development, the postconventional stage, the individual’s identity expands once again, this time to include a care and concern for all peoples, regardless of race, color, sex, or creed, which is why this stage is also called worldcentric.
“Thus, moral development tends to move from “me” (egocentric) to “us” (ethnocentric) to “all of us” (worldcentric)—a good example of the unfolding stages of consciousness.
“Another way to picture these 3 stages is as body, mind, and spirit. Those words all have many valid meanings, but when used specifically to refer to stages, they mean:
“Stage 1, which is dominated by my gross physical reality, is the “body” stage (using body in its typical meaning of physical body). Since you are identified merely with the separate bodily organism and its survival drives, this is also the “me” stage.
“Stage 2 is the “mind” stage, where identity expands from the isolated gross body and starts to share relationships with many others, based perhaps on shared values, mutual interests, common ideals, or shared dreams. Because I can use the mind to take the role of others—to put myself in their shoes and feel what it is like to be them—my identity expands from “me” to “us” (the move from egocentric to ethnocentric).
“With stage 3, my identity expands once again, this time from an identity with “us” to an identity with “all of us” (the move from ethnocentric to worldcentric). Here I begin to understand that, in addition to the wonderful diversity of humans and cultures, there are also similarities and shared commonalities. Discovering the commonwealth of all beings is the move from ethnocentric to worldcentric, and is “spiritual” in the sense of things common to all sentient beings.
T”hat is one way to view the unfolding from body to mind to spirit, where each of them is considered as a stage, wave, or level of unfolding care and consciousness, moving from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric.
“We will be returning to stages of evolution and development, each time exploring them from a new angle. For now, all that is required is an understanding that by “stages” we mean progressive and permanent milestones along the evolutionary path of your own unfolding. Whether we talk stages of consciousness, stages of energy, stages of culture, stages of spiritual realization, stages of moral development, and so on, we are talking of these important and fundamental rungs in the unfolding of your higher, deeper, wider potentials….”
February 21st, 2010 at 1:42 am
Finally, for this evening:
After experiencing a profound state of Wholeness we often report that – in truth, words are unable to fully do it justice…that at some important level, the experience is ineffable:
Regarding this and other related predicaments, Roberto Assagioli, originator of the psycho-spiritual approach known as Psychosynthesis, makes note of cases where one aspect of the psyche is far more developed than the rest, adding:
“The fatal error of all who fall victim to these illusions is to attribute to their personal ego or “self” the qualities and powers of the Self…
“instances of such confusion, more or less pronounced, are not uncommon among people dazzled by contact with truths which are too powerful for their mental capacities to grasp and assimilate.”
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:11 am
One of the paramount issues in working to comprehend and take effective action vis-a-vis evil is “who we think We are.”
Our conception of ourselves, in turn, reflects our level of consciousness (or awareness). Evil simply appears as qualitatively different phenomena, for example, when viewed from:
1) our taken for granted (usually “aristotelian”) consensus-based, discursive mind
2) the “Causal level” of reality-perception
and
3) the Non-Dual perspective of unitive consciousness – the state sometimes known as “liberation” or “enlightenment.”
(Here the term enlightenment has a very different meaning than when used to refer to the “age of the Enlightenment”).*
Just as when we go to the eye-doctor, and she asks us to observe the chart through a variety of lenses…the very nature of evil appears differently when viewed from deeper (or more expanded) vs. superficial (or more narrow) levels and points of view.
We are called to First turn inward and “observe/examine the observer” – and his or her assumptions. My sense is that to the degree our worldview/framework remains limited to the paradigms handed down from the Enlightenment (including age-old premises arising out if our Judeo-Christian heritage) – to that degree we will necessarily have an incomplete or “fractional” grasp of how to most effectively deal with evil.
* From Wikipedia:
The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment) is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority.
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:24 am
From Jean Klein’s book: The Sacred Quest:
Q: Where does the desire to be united with God come from?
A. Union belongs to the mystic and oneness to the sage. The word union presupposes parts. You take yourself for a fraction, an isolated entity, and you long to return to what you suppose to be your origin. You may lose yourself…in ecstasy…[However], when the ego is submerged in feeling it dies temporarily but returns in daily life. You can lose yourself in ecstatic states, but when your real nature is not a state, why look for states?
Q: What is the nature of the relationship, if [the reality is that] there is no disciple and no teacher?
A: To take oneself for something is a restriction. It is a fraction. All acts and thoughts coming from a fraction are also fractional. One who lives in completeness cannot take himself as a fraction, a teacher. He (or she) is established in non-duality, sees only non-duality…